Books by Michael Shenkman, Ph. D.

Into the Open: Mentoring Mystic Aspirations

Into the Open: Mentoring Mystic Aspirations offers readers a new way to think about creativity--their own and others'. Author Michael Shenkman shows how 'mystic aspirations' generate a unique creative spirit, opening up new avenues on which to explore both the human endeavor and our own lives. Shenkman outlines the key factors to keep in mind when mentoring people with mystic aspirations. He provides new ideas about how the mystic's "aspiring mind" works, and highlights stories of the people who set this figuration of breakout creativity on its way, changing the human endeavor forever. Mentors and other support providers will benefit from this new outlook on the great human urge to create. Shenkman has more than 40 years of experience in coaching and mentoring executives in technical, creative, and entrepreneurial fields. Into the Open is Shenkman's fourth book on mentoring and leadership.

Mentoring differs from instruction, teaching, and coaching in that it emphasizes not talents and skills used in executing a project, but the qualities and values of life that are needed to sustain oneself in the creative endeavor. In LeaderMentoring, Shenkman makes the case for leader mentoring. “No mentors, no leaders,” he says. Yet, this great,ancient, and necessary catalyst for learning has been neglected by our training and development industry. Leader Mentoring comprises a qualitatively different service than does coaching. For any executive who wants to succeed, coaching hasproven its worth. But mentoring touches something else: how managers can shape their lives so that they can step into larger challenges and risks to accomplish something greater than they ever have before.Shenkman delves into the true significance of mentoring. This edgy book introduces new concepts by asking readers to open their hearts and minds and think differently. It reaches for the true history, tradition, and spirit that motivates mentoring. Throughout the book, Shenkman’s colleagues and clients tell their stories about their own mentoring experiences. “Mentoring has changed everything in my life,” says one.

The book envisions the unfolding of the story by which people who are leaders become great leaders. The story has four parts. Each of these parts constitutes a learning moment, an occasion for pausing and reflecting, as we journey on the path to great leading. During these moments, we check in with Beth and reflect on the experience that is bringing her to a point of needing new realizations. Then we discuss what those realizations spark in terms of new insights and new openings into the practices that enable great leading to take shape. At each of these pauses on the path we find a marker that helps us sort out what is occurring for Beth at this time and place. The markers take the form of the arches. The components of each of the arches remains the same – four spires and a keystone – but at each point in the journey, what those components represent evolves. They have to evolve because each of these occasions makes an occasion during which the leader realizes new dimensions of herself and of the endeavor. The lessons learned at the previous arches are retained, and are actually expanded and enriched. Thus at any point in the journey, the leader is learning at most five (not 140) lessons. After the third arch, we might imagine, the leader can venture forth with no need of any learning device, any “arch,” at all.